UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item “PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD”: A MIXED-METHODS EXPLORATION OF RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY WITHIN FORMERLY INCARCERATED PEOPLES’ DESISTANCE PROCESS(2024) Dougall, Mansi; Morgan, Dr. Amy A.; Family Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Research on the relationship between religion and spirituality in promoting desistance among the formerly incarcerated remains mixed. Certain studies indicate a negative correlation between religiosity and criminal behavior (Johnson, 2011; Levitt & Loper, 2009), whereas others report no significant link between religion and post-release conduct (Giordano et al., 2008; Stansfield et al., 2017). To advance this body of literature, the present mixed-methods cross-sectional study examined the association between religion and spirituality on self-reported instances of almost re- offending among formerly incarcerated individuals utilizing secondary data analysis. Additionally, perceptions on how religion and/or spirituality contributed to formerly incarcerated individual’s desistance process was explored, sensitized by Family Systems Theory. The sample consisted of n = 191 formerly incarcerated individuals who were released from a carceral setting two or more years ago, and reported successfully desisting from further criminal behavior. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics and logistic regression to examine the relationships between religion, spirituality, and self-reported reoffending. Thematic analysis was used to analyze participants’ qualitative responses of how religion and spirituality contributed to the desistance process. The present study contributed to the advancement of knowledge in desistance processes, with implications for criminal justice rehabilitation to guide efforts in supporting the successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals into societyItem Positioned to handle the "peaks and valleys": Narratives of Black and spiritual students attending PWIs(2021) Hall, Terra Nicole; Moore, Candace M.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The interrelatedness of spirituality and race has been understudied in higher education (McGuire et al., 2017; Patton & McClure, 2009; Watson, 2006). Whereas existing scholarship has indicated religion and spirituality have been found to be important for Black college students (Chae et al., 2004), there is a need to distinguish between religion and spirituality (Paredes-Collins & Collins, 2011). Although religion may still be highly significant for some Black college students, growing evidence points to a shift in the general population away from formalized religion to one of individualized spirituality (Streib, 2008). Therefore, the current study sought to explore the intersection of racial and spiritual identities for Black undergraduate students and understand how self-identified Black and spiritual students experience support while attending predominantly white institutions (PWIs). A conceptual framework that included the radical healing framework (French et al., 2020) and Black liberation theology discourse (Cone, 1977) was used to frame the current study. In this critical constructivist narrative study, semistructured interviews and visual data served as data sources. The collected data from 13 Black and spiritual undergraduate students attending PWIs uncovered knowledge about the intersection of racial and spiritual identities. Specifically, findings illuminated Black and spiritual students’ definitions of spirituality, identification of on- and off-campus sources of support, and revelation into the emotions and feelings experienced by Black and spiritual students from encounters with people and spaces. Through an analytical approach of restorying, a parable was created to (re)present participants’ narratives. Findings from this study offer implications for student affairs’ practice and research. Student affairs practitioners are recommended to curate and maintain a list of on- and off-campus spaces, expand curricular and co-curricular opportunities to discuss race and spirituality, and increase agency for faculty and staff to address racial and spiritual identities with students. Future research should seek to study the intersection of racial and spiritual identities among graduate students, explore spirituality without a Christian lens, consider other institutional contexts outside of PWIs, probe into intersections of other marginalized social identities, and attend to these topics outside of an ongoing global health pandemic.Item An Exploration of Works Inspired by Spiritual Traditions in Contemporary Flute Repertoire (1981 - 2010)(2015) Shanley, Meghan; Hill, Mark D; Goldman, Aaron; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Composers are currently utilizing a vast number of technologies and extended flute techniques as expressive tools in spiritually inspired compositions. With the use of pitch bends, breath and wind tones, multiphonics, flutter tongue, and timbral trills, traditional flutes of different cultures are mimicked on the modern instrument more vividly than ever before. These extended techniques allow composers to combine their styles with religious traditions in an innovative manner and connect with audiences in fresh and original ways. This dissertation explores the different avenues of spiritual musical expression in contemporary flute repertoire through three thematic recital programs. The first program creates a soundscape of the musical traditions of five different faiths: Hinduism, Divination, Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity; the second program consists of chamber works inspired by traditional Western belief systems; and the final program is made up of works written as social commentary on religious or spiritual conflicts, specifically on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the Yom Kippur War, and the Trail of Tears. The following works are performed and discussed in this dissertation: Robert Dick – Techno Yaman; Michael Daugherty – Crystal and Trail of Tears; Howard J. Buss – Scenes from the Holy Land; Tōru Takemitsu – Air; Daniel Kellogg – Into Utter Forever and Divinum Mysterium; Christopher Rouse – Compline; Richard Toensing – Children of Light; Ruth Schönthal – A Bird Over Jerusalem; Leonard Bernstein – Halil; and Katherine Hoover – Winter Spirits.Item Mysticism in 20th and 21st Century Violin Music(2014) Bagley, Paul M.; Salness, David; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"Mysticism," according to the Oxford dictionary, can be defined as "belief in or devotion to the spiritual apprehension of truths inaccessible to the intellect." More generally, it applies to the aspects of spirituality and religion that can only be directly experienced, rather than described or learned. This dissertation examines how mysticism fits into the aesthetic, compositional, and musical philosophies of four prominent composers of the 20th and 21st centuries—Ernest Bloch, Olivier Messiaen, Sophia Gubaidulina, and John Zorn, with a cameo by the Jewish composer David Finko—and how their engagement with the concept of mysticism and the mystical experience can be seen in a selection of their works featuring the violin: Bloch's Baal Shem suite and Poème mystique; Finko's Lamentations of Jeremiah, Zorn's Kol Nidre, Goetia, All Hallow's Eve, and Amour fou; Gubaidulina's In tempus praesens; and Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. These works exemplify the mysticism shared by these composers, despite their different religious and cultural backgrounds, particularly their belief in the transcendental nature of music. This belief is expressed in their works through programmatic, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and formal elements, all of which display, to a greater or lesser degree, the influence of mystical philosophy and symbolism.Item Walking the Labyrinth: Examining the Intersection of Spirituality Among Senior Student Affairs Administrators(2013) Riera, Jose-Luis; Jones, Susan R.; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As senior student affairs administrators (SSAAs) seek to lead effectively in higher education, some SSAAs consider spiritual resources to enhance leadership practice. Yet, empirical literature on the intersection of spirituality and leadership in higher education is relatively absent and needs to be deepened and broadened. The purpose of this study was to examine the intersection of spirituality and leadership among SSAAs. Guided by a constructivist epistemology, this grounded theory included the following research questions: (1) what can be learned about how spirituality influences the leadership practices of SSAAs when the intersection of spiritual and leadership development is considered; (2) what are the critical influences on the process by which spirituality informs the leadership practices of SSAAs; (3) how, if at all, do the spiritually-guided leadership practices of the SSAAs in this study influence the organizational environments of their institutions; (4) how, if at all, are the spiritually-guided and value-laden leadership practices of the SSAAs in this study challenged by the socio-cultural environment of the academy pertaining to values, spirituality, and religiosity? Data sources included two interviews with a sample of 14 SSAAs. The grounded theory, Walking the Labyrinth: The Process of Leading with a Spiritual Orientation among Senior Student Affairs Administrators, emerged from the data analysis. One core category and four key categories emerged from data analysis. The core category, leading with a spiritual orientation, describes the pervasive nature of spirituality within the leadership process, and the relationships between spirituality, values, and leadership, which form a "core" that facilitates congruency in decision-making for spiritually-oriented SSAAs. The first key category, sustaining a spiritual outlook, describes how spiritually-oriented SSAAs develop a spiritual outlook on life and apply this outlook to their leadership. The next two key categories describe characteristics of leading with a spiritual orientation: catalyzing spirituality to maximize leadership capacity and prioritizing people in leadership practice. The last key category, "managing your identity": navigating the academy's socio-cultural environment describes the context for the process of leading with a spiritual orientation. This grounded theory has implications for future research and theory development, for SSAAs, and for student affairs practice.Item We're plastic, but we still have fun(2011) Monaghan, Jonathan; Morse, Brandon; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"We're plastic, but we still have fun" navigates the slippery divide between reality and fiction, icon and corporate logo, and commercialism and contemporary art. A 3D animation and a large plastic Target sign make up an exhibition composed of subject matter that is as iconic as it is wide-ranging. Mythical animals, medical devices, corporate logos, Gothic architecture, Pixar, and heraldry conflate into an absurd vision seemingly from alternate reality which is both familiar and alien; playing with our desires, dreams and anxiety.Item Temple in the Wood: Beyond Sensing Architecture(2010) Lubkin, Arik Craig; Quiros, Luis D; Architecture; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The idea that we understand the world through our senses has been expressed time and again, yet modern architectural solutions have largely ignored or dismissed their potential to create beautiful or sublime sensory experience. Too often, buildings turn inward, absorbing their occupants in a lifeless environment devoid of meaningful connection to nature. Through the design of a Center for Jewish Life for Congregation Beth Israel - The West Temple in Cleveland, Ohio, this thesis endeavors to explore an architecture which is rooted in the sensory experience, but which does not ignore the interpretive and meaning-seeking nature of people. It is an architecture which does not intend to impose meaning, but which allows itself to be a repository of meaning and provides an opportunity for realizable ontological experience.Item Spirituality in the Laboratory: Negotiating the politics of knowledge in the psychedelic sciences(2010) Corbin, Michelle Dawn; Kestnbaum, Meyer; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this study I argue that psychedelic substances served as a doorway through which spirituality entered the scientific laboratory to an unprecedented degree given their traditionally demarcated relationship by making spirituality more amenable to scientific paradigms and accessible to scientific methodologies. I conduct a feminist discourse analysis of the politics of knowledge enacted in this unique intersection of spirituality and science in the psychedelic sciences. I draw on feminist theories of science and knowledge which conceptualize science as a dominant knowledge constituted through and productive of the intersecting and historically hierarchical systems of power of race, class, gender and nation. Using discourse analysis techniques, I analyze a documentary archive I created through a theoretically driven sampling of the psychedelic sciences of spirituality from the 1930's to the present. In Chapter 2, I analyze how spirituality was brought forward and negotiated in these sciences. I argue that psychedelic scientists utilized a range of what I call tactics of legitimation to justify the scientific study of these peculiar substances and the spirituality with which they are associated vis-à-vis dominant scientific knowledges and I analyze the attendant epistemological costs of this assimilation. In Chapter 3, I analyze the efforts to integrate psychedelic substances and the spiritual experiences they induce into western therapeutic assumptions and practices. I argue that their efforts to scientifically determine the mysticality of mystical experiences and their pursuits of scientific liturgical authority over the administration of psychedelic sacraments resulted in the emergence of a would-be psychiatric clerical authority. In Chapter 4, I analyze the efforts to integrate and develop indigenous spiritual psychedelic knowledges and practices across each step of a bioprospecting model from plant identification to the determination of mechanisms of action and finally to drug development studies. I argue that in each step indigenous spiritual knowledges were assimilated into dominant scientific assumptions and practices reifying western scientific authority over indigenous knowledges and practices and reinforcing historically hierarchical colonial relationships despite the `good intentions' of these psychedelic scientists. In the final chapter of this study I discuss future sociological and feminist projects analyzing these peculiar psychedelic sciences and spiritual substances.Item The Lived Experience of Being in a Sacred Place Constructed as an Archetypal Circle(2007-04-25) Carroll, Mary Janette; Hultgren, Francine H.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF BEING IN A SACRED PLACE CONSTRUCTED AS AN ARCHETYPAL CIRCLE Mary J. (Jan) Carroll, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation directed by: Professor Francine H. Hultgren Department of Education Policy and Leadership The purpose of this study is to understand the meaning of women's lived experiences of major archetypes revealed through a "walk about" journey around the directions of a sacred circle. Significant themes are opened up through hermeneutic phenomenological methodology and developed using metaphorical language related to the images that surfaced. Four women took part in several, in-depth, guided imagery sessions with the researcher where they explored different directions of a sacred circle. Their visions and interpretations of this experience, coupled with literary and philosophic sources, further reveal the deeper meaning of a sacred experience and the power of this extraordinary way of exploring women's interior lives. Multiple metaphors surfaced related to the explored archetypes which were the warrior, divine child, goddess, sage, mother earth, father sky and center. The research opens us to a deeper understanding of a "walk about" in circle by exploring such themes as listening, interconnectedness, relationships, double belongingness, groundedness, freedom, authenticity, justice, the body's felt sense of being, discernment, attunement, nowness, trust, reverence, the flesh, wilderness, balance, reversibility, intertwining, crossing the chiasm, mirroring, mystical participation, reflection, comportment, moodedness, and the nature of sitting between, to name a few. Through the voices of these "walk about" women, the knowledge gathered illuminates the elements of what it means to be in a sacred circle and face the powerful archetypes that reside in different regions of the soul landscape. Through this research we come to know an educational process that can serve to reshape women's perceptions of who they are in relation to their souls and a prayerful respect for self that can support both their personal and spiritual growth. This work is also a personal account of the lived experience of a researcher who actually went on vision quest, used the archetypal circle of healing and wholeness, and participated in Sun Dance to understand the phenomenon. The researcher's voice echoes the participants' experiences and themes. Each woman's nature and soul becomes elevated by having taken a "walk about" in an archetypal circle.